As was the case with Congressman Nunes’ memo and his decision to prematurely end the superficial House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (HPSCI) investigation into the Russian active measures and cyberwarfare campaign against the US, Congressman Nunes didn’t seem to accomplish much as a result of the DOJ briefings he demanded yesterday. From the AP:

It was unclear how much information was given to lawmakers. According to a U.S. official familiar with the meeting, the briefers did not reveal the name of an informant. They brought documents but did not share them, and made several remarks about the importance of protecting intelligence sources and methods. The person declined to be identified because the briefing was classified.

Nunes attended both briefings Thursday. According to the U.S. official and another person briefed on the Capitol Hill meeting, Nunes did not speak at all during the briefing. The second person also declined to be named because the meeting was classified.

According to the AP’s reporting, the DOJ and FBI did not provide the covered human source’s identity despite it having been speculated about in right wing online media sources since March and circulating in the news media for the past ten days or so. This is significant. This was Deputy AG Rosenstein and FBI Director Wray reinforcing that they will not disclose methods and sources to Congress or the White House via their pets in Congress, which is as it should be as sources and methods are outside of need to know for congressional oversight. I’m sure this won’t stop right wing news and social media from promoting the absolutely bizarre conspiracy that the highest echelons of the DOJ and the FBI, as well as the career personnel in the national security division conspired with both the Obama administration and the Clinton campaign and Vladimir Putin to frame the current President as a Russian dupe in order to prevent him from being elected. While keeping it all secret!

That’s always been the most insane portion of all of this. That there was a far ranging conspiracy to prevent the President’s election that included President Obama, the appointed and career leadership at the DOJ, FBI, DNI, CIA, and NSA, as well as career personnel in the DOJ and FBI’s national security directorate. That it was all coordinated with Secretary Clinton’s campaign. And that they were all conspiring with Vladimir Putin. All to prevent the President from being elected by tainting his campaign with the false narrative of being not just favored by Vladimir Putin, but actively seeking to work with and/or working with Vladimir Putin. And that the parties to the conspiracy were so successful in their secret plotting against the President and his campaign that they lied to reporters from The New York Times and other news media all the way through the election in order to keep the conspiracy a secret. And, as a result, the conspiracy actually failed and the President’s campaign was successful and he was elected because no one knew about it. Which, of course, makes no sense and is belied by every reported fact over the past two years about the President’s campaign and the people working on it.

What really needs to happen now is that the DOJ and the FBI need to ascertain who leaked the covered human sources identity to Chuck Ross at Tucker Carlson’s The Daily Caller. Leaks of covered human sources are direct threats to the national security of the United States. They place the covered human source at risk. They place anyone who is contact with the covered human source at risk even if these people are not subjects or targets of any intelligence or criminal investigation. When these types of leaks happen the families, friends, professional colleagues, neighbors, and even casual personal and professional acquaintances of the covered human source are placed at risk. And they make it much, much harder for the US to both recruit new covered human sources in the future and for the US’s allies and partners to share information from their own covered human sources.

Reporting on covered human sources – and I want to be very clear here – is protected under the 1st Amendment. Even though that reporting is also a direct threat to the national security of the United States. Ross is rightfully off limits because of the 1st Amendment, but whoever provided that information to him needs to be identified and prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.

Stay clandestine!

Open thread.

* Just a quick note, before anyone asks in the comments, Congressman Nunes’ family came to the US from Lajes in the Azores. And ever since he got himself onto the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence he’s been trying to relocate significant amounts of US intelligence capability to Lajes, which makes no logistical or financial sense, but would enrich his relatives and their friends. I wrote about this here. And it’s why I use Lajes in the titles of my Nunes’ posts, like the title for a weird Ludlum like novel.

While President Trump has publicly declared his love for WikiLeaks, last month there were reports that federal prosecutors are preparing charges against Assange. The Obama administration held off on charging Assange because it was unclear how they could charge him for publishing government secrets but not mainstream news outlets. But they may have found a way around that, since Chelsea Manning admitted that Assange helped her figure out how to anonymously gain access to government systems. (That charge could have consequences for journalists too, but the Trump administration generally seems less concerned about that.)

Wait, I’m confused. Here I thought there was mounting evidence that the Trump campaign was being aided, abetted, and hell, outright *controlled* by the Russians, all with the view of getting the orange lard tub elected in the teeth of the odds. But now according to the magic/logic of the “No puppet! No puppet! YOU’RE the puppet!” rules, it was actually everyone else on the American political scene who was conspiring with the Russians to prevent Donald Trump’s election? Don’s BFF Vlad was actually working with his political enemies? This wonderful world!

Just FYI about the tortured logic of their conspiracy story, the response to the fact that the FBI didn’t use any of the information against the Trump campaign is that everyone assumed Clinton would win, but that this investigation was the “insurance policy” (referenced by Agent Sztrok) in the unlikely event that Trump won, in which case it could be used to intimidate him or bring him down. It’s still really a stupid theory.

@germy: You’d think someone would’ve just pulled the damn fire alarm in the embassy at this point so the Metropolitan Police or Special Branch could just arrest him when he came outside like everyone else.

Congressman Nunes’ family came to the US from Lajes …he’s been trying to relocate significant amounts of US intelligence capability to Lajes, which makes no logistical or financial sense, but would enrich his relatives and their friends..

That’s always been the most insane portion of all of this. That there was a far ranging conspiracy to prevent the President’s election that included President Obama, … That it was all coordinated with Secretary Clinton’s campaign. And that they were all conspiring with Vladimir Putin.

Of course this is insane. Nunes and his ilk cultivate the anger of people who believe that Obama and Clinton, by their very nature, hate America and never should have been allowed to be in charge of the government.

This is also why these dopes don’t see any contradiction in Trump loving Putin, while supposedly decrying an Obama-Putin conspiracy.

@Miss Bianca:
The key thing about any good conspiracy theory is that it’s impervious to facts. Lack of evidence is proof of a coverup, and contrary facts are red herrings spread by the conspiracy. The very lack of supporting evidence and presence of contrary evidence becomes proof of the power of the conspiracy.

@Miss Bianca: See, I keep telling people there are now two realities in operation and they will continue to diverge until a second Universe splits off from the original. Basic science-fiction science.
Seriously, this is why we have to STOP WORRYING ABOUT WHAT THESE PEOPLE THINK. At this point, we need to muster the troops and beat them like rented mules.

@Jonny Scrum-half: The “insurance policy” thing is so dumb, too. When you read what Strzok was saying, he was talking about how no one expected Trump to win so it might not be worth spending a lot of time and money running these things down – it’s not nearly as important to investigate if he’s a criminal and corrupt failed candidate. But as an insurance policy, they needed to start the investigation in case he won, because then it WOULD be important to know if the president was in hock to foreign powers.

There’s no conspiracy there. It’s just people investigating relevant things.

Trump is the person, who fought against the dishonest Deep State, the wicked Obama/Clinton machine that would anything to win (including murder, in Hillary’s case), and the evil Russians trying to take over our government, with their puppet, Hillary Clinton.

As far as conspiracy theories go it is really, really focused on making Trump look like the savior of America. So it looks like a serious effort by political types to spin a new narrative, rather than the typical conspiracy stuff like 9/11 Truthers, anti-vaxxers, flat- Earthers, etc., where no one is a hero, but there are so many, many villains hiding the truth.

@MomSense: Well, I’ve read the records they want to destroy include those on deaths in custody and sexual abuse, so I’d say the coverup is broader than that. But probably includes any trace of the missing kids or the fact that they’re missing.

@germy:
A canary trap is giving different people unique information and seeing which information leaks. I guess it isn’t really a canary trap if you have only one suspect; a canary trap is useful if you have several suspects and you don’t know who to investigate further. If you have only one suspect, it’s more of a classic sting.

The similarities between those who think OJ Simpson was framed and those who think Donald Trump is being framed are striking. The only difference is that virtually no single individual is in both groups.

A canary trap is a method for exposing an information leak by giving different versions of a sensitive document to each of several suspects and seeing which version gets leaked. It could be one false statement, to see if sensitive information gets out to other people as well. Special attention is paid to the quality of the prose of the unique language, in the hopes that the suspect will repeat it verbatim in the leak, thereby identifying the version of the document.

In Game of Thrones, Tyrion Lannister used a Canary Trap after being named Hand of The King.

That there was a far ranging conspiracy to prevent the President’s election that included President Obama, the appointed and career leadership at the DOJ, FBI, DNI, CIA, and NSA, as well as career personnel in the DOJ and FBI’s national security directorate. That it was all coordinated with Secretary Clinton’s campaign. And that they were all conspiring with Vladimir Putin. All to prevent the President from being elected by tainting his campaign with the false narrative of being not just favored by Vladimir Putin, but actively seeking to work with and/or working with Vladimir Putin.

@Emma: Well, between shit like this, and the Bernie bros/sisses on my FB feed who are all like, “Progressives rule! Democrats drool!” (by which we mean. “establishment” Democrats, of course), I have come to realize that there is only one commonality keeping the two universes bound – all of White America agrees on one thing: no matter what happens, it’s always the Democrats who are the real enemy.

@Adam L Silverman: I have a sensible friend telling me that the missing 1500 are children who crossed the border by themselves, and the assumption is/was that most, if not nearly all ran away from their foster homes to reunite with families in the US, so finding them now would cause more problems than it solves.

@FlyingToaster: There is another country besides the US and Canada in NAFTA, Mexico. It’s all about keeping the brown people out. That there is collateral damage doesn’t seem to be a consideration. Any immigration program that is used in significant numbers by non-white people (all of them really) will be attacked, see schrodinger’s cat comment above. I’m surprised they haven’t started on H1-B yet.

Republicans want to eliminate all immigration into this country. Whatever the 1920’s law that put a halt to massive immigration was, they want that and more. They not only want to keep people out, they want to remove people who are already in.

Saying they oppose illegal immigration is just the opening bid and has always been step one in cleansing this country of non-whites.

the highest echelons of the DOJ and the FBI, as well as the career personnel in the national security division conspired with both the Obama administration and the Clinton campaign and Vladimir Putin to frame the current President as a Russian dupe in order to prevent him from being elected. While keeping it all secret!

Golly, you’d think after Obama and Hillary successfully conspired with Al Qaeda to assassinate a US ambassador and clandestine CIA personnel in Benghazi, those Deep State people would have been reluctant to work with them again to hatch this plot. Wheels within wheels, I guess.

They have. They are making it harder to get visas and renew visas. The new rule is that your education has to match what your job skills require. So, if you are in IT, and have a Business major in undergrad or a Chemistry major, you might not get a visa, because it isn’t a Comp. Sci. major. A lot of folks have had renewal applications denied.

@MattF: which is funny because her op-ed sounds like a HRC speech, word for word. Fucking get OVER it, #NTs, the dirty hippies are quite respectable these days and have the added benefit of not being insane

Do you really want all the never-Trumpers in the Democratic Party, though? A lot of them are far Right. They’re just polite.

If they launch campaigns against Trumpsters as Democrats guess what we get? Republicans. They’ve reinvented Bush as a moderate and Bush was no fucking moderate. Their Party went insane and they get to have ours? These are the people who invaded Iraq, deregulated the financial sector, gutted environmental laws, hired a pack of vehemently anti-worker judges- people who cannot seem to screw working people hard enough.

I don’t really care how they solve their dilemma but if they’re going to be Democrats they’re going to have to support some of the ideas we support. Them “moving to the center” means they’re slightly to the Right of Dick Cheney. That’s not my center.

@Kay: Well, on the other hand, you have my above-mentioned white “progressives” who proudly blame HRC and “establishment Democrats” for everything and expect a goddamn participation trophy for having condescended to vote for her at all – the ones who were smart enough to do so, at least, and didn’t go full Bernie-or-bust. I want to tell them, “thanks for doing literally the LEAST you could possibly have done to save this country from the downward slide into fascism we are now seeing.”

ETA: I sometimes wonder if the “Never Trumpers” are actually going to be harder to persuade, or prove any less treacherous as an ally, as your white lefty dudebro/sis (because there are plenty of white women out there singing the anti-HRC song, too.)

@TenguPhule: Prezactly. The never-Trumpers are allies of convenience right now. Once the plague of Trumpism is destroyed, then we take care of the rest of the assholes, and make no mistake: Trump is the end result of 50 years of GOP conniving. The rot is deep and irreparable. Cleanse it with fire.

@Calouste: I know that Mexico is in NAFTA, but up here in the People’s Republic, we get more people from Canada.

That being said, two of the aforementioned engineers were NOT white; and there’s a professor I know, of Asian extraction, who’s going back to Canada because of Trump. Her son is one of my daughter’s classmates.

This is such utter bullshit. And ICE is stopping people in Vermont now, asking their citizenship. Jeebus.

I’m convinced Nunes isn’t so much covering up for the president as he is covering up for himself.

Even if Nunes (and Ryan, McConnell, et. al.) started out only interested in protecting their party’s president (or presidential candidate), once they started abusing their offices to protect him, they now had to worry about their own misbehavior being revealed. This is one of the classic problems with espionage: even if you aren’t initially vulnerable to blackmail, getting involved makes you vulnerable.

The similarities between those who think OJ Simpson was framed and those who think Donald Trump is being framed are striking.

This is totally unfair. As the Rampart scandal showed, LAPD was prone to framing black people, so there was some real justification for being skeptical of them. I don’t think there’s any equivalent evidence of the FBI framing political candidates.

@TenguPhule: Yep — which means that farms, dairies, and fishing operations who had relied on skilled seasonal H1-B labor for years now go to the back of the line and wait for a lottery allotment. Naturally, most of these folks voted for Trump. Face, meet leopard.

@Roger Moore:
It is perfectly legitimate to be skeptical of the police. But it is also legitimate to question why the suspect can’t remember if he cut his finger before or after a 4 hour airplane flight. The point is that supporters are willing to ignore pretty serious evidence against their guy because they are convinced the system has it in for them.

A Russian oligarch with links to the Kremlin met Donald Trump’s lawyer Michael Cohen at Trump Tower in New York City less than two weeks before Trump’s inauguration as president, a source familiar with the meeting said on Friday.

During a discussion in Cohen’s office, located on the skyscraper’s 26th floor 11 days before the inauguration, Cohen and Russian businessman Viktor Vekselberg talked about improving relations between Moscow and Washington and arranged to meet again at the inauguration, the New York Times first reported. The paper quoted Andrew Intrater, an American who attended the meeting and manages investments for Vekselberg.

The source, who asked for anonymity as private conversations were being discussed, confirmed the New York Times’ account to Reuters by telephone.

Cohen and a lawyer for Intrater could not immediately be reached for comment.

The paper reported that days after Trump’s inauguration as president in January 2017, Intrater’s private equity firm, Columbus Nova, gave Cohen a $1m consulting contract, which was now under investigation by US federal authorities.

Wave a two meter stick around Trump’s associates and you keep hitting Russians. It is mysterious. //

This was Deputy AG Rosenstein and FBI Director Wray reinforcing that they will not disclose methods and sources to Congress or the White House via their pets in Congress, which is as it should be as sources and methods are outside of need to know for congressional oversight.

So what you’re saying is, Rosenstein did not cave, and has done what he is legally required to as an employee of the Executive Branch, while protecting the intent of the law and the independence of the investigation. The system has not failed another notch, and even held up when our enemies thought they found a loophole. Got it.

@Frankensteinbeck: I’m saying he’s walking a knife’s edge in an attempt to secure the time and space needed for 1) Mueller to do what he has to do and (perhaps more importantly) 2) for the rest of us to do what we have to do and flip at least the House if not both the House and the Senate in the midterm elections in November. If the latter happens, he’ll have a lot more time and space for Mueller to do his job in a thorough and proper manner.

The President got extremely profound during his address to the US Naval Academy graduating class:

Trump: "We are recommitting to this fundamental truth: we are a maritime nation. True. And being a maritime nation, we're surrounded by sea. We must always dominate that sea. We will always dominate the oceans."

@TenguPhule: I’m just amazed that he didn’t tell them that the sea is made of water. And that not a lot of people know that. Also, the sea is doing an amazing job and is being recognized more and more.

Trump didn’t come out of nowhere, though. The Republican Party (supposedly) had this huge soul-searching after the 2012 loss where they admitted they have a huge group of grifters and hangers-on who radicalize their base. Trump came out of that. He’s sort of the epitome of it. Trump was actually PART of it- he and his disgusting family backed birtherism.

They know this is going on. They know people like Hannitty and Guiliani and the 500 others have been lining their pockets for 20 years tricking the GOP base. They get further Right every year and have for the past 20 years. They don’t compromise. Bush never did. They’ll remake the D Party into Establishment Republicans because they’re not wanted anywhere else.

WH leaves open possibility of dispatching summit planning team to Singapore if its rescheduled. “There are still a few hours left to decide,” says @PressSec. “If it takes place on June 12th, we’ll be ready. If it takes place on July 12th, we’ll be ready,” she told driveway gaggle

What a shame she’s still considered credible. Good Lord, was there ever any comedy routine that has been more vindicated than the bit about how Sanders is a liar? She’s as big a liar as her boss. Or her dad.

She told 3 versions of the Trump/DOJ/FBI meeting and each one was carefully transcribed and presented to the public as “truth”, over a span of 48 hours. She’s a joke.

Trump: "We are recommitting to this fundamental truth: we are a maritime nation. True. And being a maritime nation, we're surrounded by sea. We must always dominate that sea. We will always dominate the oceans."

@sublime33:
I agree that OJ was certainly guilty, that his changing stories are very suspicious, and that the evidence he was framed doesn’t hold up*. But a lot of people dismissed, and continue to dismiss, the jury’s willingness to consider that he might have been framed as some kind of gullibility and/or susceptibility to racial hucksterism. I’ll admit that I thought it was ridiculous to think about the police framing him at the time.

The Rampart scandal opened my eyes, as it should have for any white person whose eyes weren’t already open to the extent of racist corruption in the LAPD. The idea that the police might have framed a rich and famous black man is much more plausible when you know they were regularly framing poor and unknown black men. The truth is the black people on the jury knew things about LAPD that I didn’t, and that knowledge affected their willingness to listen to theories about OJ being framed.

*Full disclosure: a former boss was an expert witness for the plaintiffs in the OJ civil trial who testified about the evidence of EDTA in the blood samples. From what I know about the evidence, there’s no way in hell the blood was planted.

@Roger Moore: So it sounds like we are on the same page. In the OJ trial, it was more about “sending a message” than debating the merits of that specific case. And it is pretty much the same with Trump’s supporters. They are fighting a bigger battle in their minds and are willing to ignore the facts in front of them in order to wind the calendar back a few decades when minorities knew their place. I did shut up a Trump defender recently when I said she sounded just like OJ’s defenders 25 years ago.

This just smells like a set-up from Rosenstein. A bit of unique, specially made up and putatively classified information will be included in the briefing. When it is leaked, it is definitively proven that Nunes is leaking information he understands to be confidential.